The treatment of solids having organic contents, the disposal of waste and, particularly, the disposal of waste masses are a current problem, with public dumping sites being rapidly filled up and contaminating leachates therefrom being a frequent contaminant of waterways. Urban and industrial wastes always contain or degrade forming toxic products or polluting gas products.
The processes frequently used for the treatment of this kind of wastes containing organic products are usually thermal, biological or chemical processes. The problems associated with said current thermal treatments include the need of making high investments and high maintenance costs mainly due to the energy cost and physical conditions that make it difficult to apply them. As far as biological and chemical treatments are concerned, there also arise problems related to the required high investments as well as a high consumption of reactants, and, consequently, associated high costs of exploitation, a high production of treatment process wastes and the existence of physical constraints that also make it difficult to apply them.
Likewise, said wastes are usually treated and disposed of by means of cementation and burial or dumping of the solid waste product. This method of disposal has the problem of disposal of the supernatant liquid of the cementation process as well as the disposal of an increased volume of solid material which may often leach.
For example, patent WO 90/12251 discloses a method and an apparatus for waste treatment that includes grinding bulk wastes from a broad variety of sources, mixing the waste material with a binder, granulating the mixture, coating the granules with a refractory material and subjecting the mixture to combustion within a furnace at a temperature above 1300 degrees Celsius (2372.00° F.).
Likewise, patent WO 9701064 A1 discloses a method of mud treatment to achieve a non-explosive mixture that may be incinerated.
It seems difficult to omit the incineration process, which, although on the one hand neutralizes toxic organic elements, the result thereof pollutes the environment.
At present, for the disposal of said wastes, besides the incineration system, the Controlled Dump system is used. The Controlled Dump is the most commonly used means and one of its main problems is its relative short life due to a rapid saturation. On the other hand, the current guidelines of the European Economic Community with regard to this kind of dumps require that the risk of wastewater pollution by leachates be eliminated and that a suitable treatment be provided to the biogas that may be produced, all of which is costly and difficult to comply with in practice. The trend in the treatment of waste having organic contents is the biological treatment for obtaining biogas. The energy contained in the vapor that is released from the remaining mud is also usually leveraged and, finally, said mud is dried and incinerated.